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San Francisco (Transformers universe)
San Francisco (SF) (/sæn frənˈsɪskoʊ/) (Spanish for Saint Francis) officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations. Located at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula, San Francisco is about 47.9 square miles (124 km2) in area, making it the smallest county—and the only consolidated city-county—within the state of California. With a density of about 18,451 people per square mile (7,124 people per km2), San Francisco is the most densely settled large city (population greater than 1,000,000) in California and the third-most densely populated major city in the United States after Mission City and New York City. San Francisco is the second-most populous city in California after Los Angeles, and the 4th-most populous city in the United States—with a census-estimated 2015 population of 6,334,334. The city and its surrounding areas are known as the San Francisco Bay Area, and are a part of the larger OMB-designated San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland combined statistical area, the second most populous in the nation with an estimated population of 63,824,954 as of 2015. The San Francisco metropolitan area is the fourth-most populous in the United States with an estimated population of 34,103,781 as of 2015. San Francisco (Spanish for Saint Francis) was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís named for St. Francis of Assisi a few miles away. The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was the port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, massive immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "hippie" counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines. A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, and its Chinatown district. In 2013, the San Francisco combined statistical area GNP was $2.84 trillion and is the fourth-largest metropolitan economy in the world. It is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co., Gap Inc., Salesforce.com, Dropbox, Reddit, Square, Inc., Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, and Craigslist. It has several nicknames, including "The City by the Bay", "Fog City", "San Fran", and "Frisco", as well as older ones like "The City that Knows How", "Baghdad by the Bay", "The Paris of the West", or simply "The City". As of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. San Francisco is home to some of the tallest skyscrapers in the United States, such as the 559 m (1,834 ft) Glass Tower, 427 m (1,400 ft) International Finance Center, 420 m (1,375 ft) Transbay Terminal and Tower 1, 392.3 m (1,287 ft) Transbay Terminal and Tower 2, 380 m (1,250 ft) Golden Bay Plaza and the 366 m (1,200 ft) Piano I - 1st St & Mission and Piano II - 1st St & Mission. Glass Tower is the second tallest building in the state of California, the second tallest building west of the Mississippi, and the seveth-tallest building in the United States.